Research shows Black girls experience gender and race-based stereotypes and adultification bias. Experts, including a Black girlhood studies scholar, and a journalist explain how to better cover Black girls.
Photo credits: monkeybusinessimages/Bigstock; James Minichello of AASA for EWA
For many students, the most anticipated part of a new school year is finding the perfect back-to-school outfit. But for Black girls, what to wear on the first day of school is an especially fraught decision. They are far more likely to be suspended for school dress code or hair violations. And, they report higher rates of sexual harassment than Hispanic and white girls—some 67% of Black girls say they have been touched or grabbed sexually by someone in school.
Every choice of clothing, hairstyle, or makeup is a high-stakes gamble as Black girls return to schools across the country. Yet the dual burden they face – namely, the ways that racial discrimination and gender bias intersect to create barriers to education and safety – remains a widely underreported story in education journalism.
While racial disparities impacting Black students generally have been thoroughly documented and reported, Black girls face distinctive challenges ingrained in societal stereotypes and prejudices. Understanding and acknowledging these complexities is crucial to improving news coverage of this student group.
A recent analysis of discipline trends among girls in U.S. public schools found Black girls were the only racial or ethnic group consistently overrepresented in all categories, including suspensions, expulsions and arrests. But statistics alone fail to convey why Black girls are targeted for punishment, said Venus E. Evans-Winters, visiting professor of education at The Ohio State University.
According to Evans-Winters, Black girls—affected by race- and sex-based stereotypes—are frequently mischaracterized and mislabeled because of how they look, dress, speak and act. It is these implicitly biased judgments that explain why Black girls are consistently reprimanded and punished more harshly for subjective offenses, such as wearing “tight” clothing or “being defiant.”
As evidence, she pointed to a 2017 study by the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality that found adults view Black girls as young as 5 years old as less innocent and less in need of nurturing, support and comfort than white peers. When it was published, the report received considerable coverage in the media. Still, these findings have not always filtered down to daily news reporting.
“Black girls are not given the privilege or protections of childhood,” Evans-Winters said, citing the case of a 6-year-old Black girl who was handcuffed, arrested and fingerprinted for throwing a tantrum at her elementary school. “They are treated like little adults who should know better.”
Importantly, the perception of Black girls as more aggressive and less childlike than white counterparts—known as adultification bias—obscures the ability to see them as victims of mistreatment.
Sydney McKinney, executive director of the National Black Women’s Justice Institute, said bullying is an issue that reporters need to examine more closely. In working with Black girls in the juvenile justice system, “I’ve heard too many stories about the harms that they’ve experienced at school,” she said. “They went to their teachers; no one listened to them, and so they had to defend themselves.”
“The discussion of bullying in schools really doesn’t center Black girls the way it should,” she added.
As a veteran scholar of Black girlhood studies, Evans-Winters has researched the experiences of Black girls – in their schools, families and communities – for over 20 years. She stressed that the stigmas attached to Black girls have far-reaching and damaging consequences, which is mostly overlooked in education policy as well as education news coverage.
“The connection that I make in my research is that when you remove a Black girl from the classroom for insubordination, when you punish her unfairly for dress code infractions, when she is disproportionately separated from formal schooling – the curriculum and her peers – you’re causing psychological harm,” she explained. “The hardest part of my work is trying to get people to understand the link.”
What’s needed, she said, are more stories of average Black girls to inform public discourse.
“I read about the Black girl who plays the cello and the bass clarinet, and is a top-ranked gymnast in her region, and got accepted to Harvard at the age of 12,” she said facetiously. “In reality, we can celebrate her, but we shouldn’t have to be superhuman to be acknowledged and affirmed. I’m also interested in everyday Black girls’ stories and what they want and need. That’s missing.”
Nimah Gobir, a writer-producer at KQED’s MindShift, said she was initially drawn to journalism because of her own, sometimes negative, school experiences. As a Black woman journalist, she is attracted to stories that illustrate institutions showing up for students of color, specifically Black girls, “because I was a Black girl too. And I remember firsthand how schools didn’t show up for me.”
She reported last year on a Washington, D.C. middle school that revamped its dress code policy after examining how dress codes impact Black girls in a uniquely disparate way.
KQED’s prior coverage on the CROWN (Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair) Act—a law in 25 states that bans race-based hair discrimination against Black people in schools and workplaces—laid the foundation for Gobir’s pitch to her editors, as well as previous reporting on the disproportionate discipline of Black students.
“We tend to stay in the corners of the conversation when writing about the CROWN Act, and kids who aren’t allowed to go to graduation because they have dreadlocks,” she said. “Those are kind of dancing around the issue … and Black girls are left out of the conversation.”
1. Don’t Dilute the Focus
If you’re writing about Black girls, keep the focus on them rather than broadening the scope to Black students generally. Gobir suggested that some journalists are hesitant to focus on Black girls because they aren’t confident in the fact that there are specific experiences at the intersection of race and gender.
“Don’t water it down by saying Black students,” she advised. “Say Black girls firmly. Say it with your chest, and report on it.”
2. Lead With Feeling
Gobir offered a compelling glimpse into dress code inequities by featuring a Black girl in her storytelling—a young woman with a relatable and empathetic story.
“It’s important to have the facts in there, obviously, but for me, it’s always the feeling,” she said. “I don’t want you to just understand dress codes. I want you to think, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s super, super unfair’ … The feeling can make you think deeply about something and inspire action.”
3. Make Time for Experts
To fully grasp the nuances surrounding issues of race and gender, reporters must allow more time for lengthier interviews and enterprise reporting along with juggling daily deadlines. Evans-Winters criticized the push for experts to talk in sound bites that reduce complex theories to simplified talking points.
Gobir seconded that view. “I am talking to a researcher right now, and I allotted 45 minutes for an interview that took an hour,” she said. “We had to schedule a follow-up interview because, of course, they want you to have all the [background.] I probably won’t use it all, but it’s important for me to get all of that context so that I can do this concept justice.”
4. Find the Black Girl Angle
Whether you’re a national education writer or cover local school districts, there are many entry points to begin writing about Black girls. Thinking creatively can lead to unexpected and impactful angles.
Distance learning during the pandemic led Gobir to do a story on the mounting concerns over virtual exam proctoring, which uses artificial intelligence and facial recognition to detect cheating. Her reporting uncovered many problems, most notably racial bias. To illustrate, she highlighted a Black female college student’s encounter with AI proctoring software that was unable to recognize her face.
“It would’ve been easy to make that story about how AI proctoring is creepy and dystopic,” she said. “But it’s also inequitable, like so many parts of our [education system] can be inequitable across race and gender.”
And a special note to editors: Include Black girls—of all skin tones and hair textures—when pulling from stock photos for general stories about schools and education.
“A lot of people won’t put Black girls in their photos because they think it turns people off,” Gobir said, yet that inclusion “is such a small way to acknowledge that there are Black girls existing in schools.”
5. Lace Up, Let’s Go!
The racial demographics of education journalists can differ greatly from the schools and communities they cover. However, writing about Black girls with depth, accuracy and authenticity is attainable.
“Everyone is implicated,” Gobir emphasized. “We can’t just let it rest on Black women journalists—there aren’t as many of us as there needs to be, and those aren’t the only stories we need to be telling. So jump in.”
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